Cooking School—how simple, and wonderful

A half day’s cooking class at a villa about a half-hour outside of Florence proved to be a highlight of the journey. With another family from Alabama, we made pasta with pesto sauce, bruschetta with tomato and eggplant, and herbed chicken with olives---oh, and something called “chocolatissimo!” Complimented with a good white wine, and topped off with my one and only taste of Grappa, it made for a pretty happy time!

The curious thing about it, for me, was that there was nothing particularly complex about anything we did. They were simple ingredients—flour, eggs, eggplant, tomatoes—though they were as fresh as the morning’s market (it’s worth thinking about what we lose by having the choices our supermarkets make available 24/7/365—eggs with yokes so bright yellow that they’re almost orange, and basil and thyme that are straight from the garden to the kitchen with an aroma I think I can still smell). But as these simple, fresh ingredients were combined in a mindful and patient way, they create a feast.

I wondered what would happen to my life if ALL my eating were so mindful and care-full? One of the things that’s Hard to adjust to in Italy is a daily schedule that takes a good 1 ½ to 2 hours for a lunch break—a far cry from the 15 to 20 minutes we too often take to ”drive through” and then wolf down a burger and fries at our desks or at a stoplight.

One of the things you notice as you tour the various monasteries is that the refectory in each place is dominated by a painting of the Last Supper on one wall. The monks, it seemed, understood that EVERY meal was an extension of the Lord’s Table (remember how peeved Paul was to learn that some in CORINTH?? Were eating their meals before the community’s worship began?)

On a very practical level, I wondered what it would do to the life of a community like Memorial if were ate, regularly, in this mindful—dare I say spiritual—way? It’s why, I think, potluck suppers are such high points of our common life, but what if such a pattern of eating were not an exceptional event in our life, but (as our Book of Order’s Directory of Worship suggests) gathering at the Table were understood to be integral to, and not an exceptional act of worship? Maybe, in some deep way, we ARE what—or at least HOW—we eat.